Yes, you can save the ``conventional´´ quantum immortality theorem by
extending the definition of a person, but is a person with an astronomical
amount of data stored in his brain plus all of my memory really me? I would
say not.
I would go even further: The person I was when I was 3 years old is dead. He
died because too much new information was added to his brain.
A different version of quantum immortality is more reasonable (meaning that
it has a much higher probability than the conventional version). The process
of death necessarily involves the destruction of the brain. The dying person
thus looses information. At a certain point the information that he is dying
is lost to the person. At that time the information still present in the
brain will be exactly identical to the information present in another
person's brain somewhere else in the multiverse. Let's call him X. There
will be an infinite number of X's
There is then a high probability that X is not dying, that in fact he is
almost identical to the original person at a younger age. The dying person
thus walks away in X's body.
Saibal
Russel wrote:
A reasonable argument, but it does have a flaw. I vaguely remember a
discussion on the evrything list related to the finiteness of
someone's memory, which I think is the same argument. Why assume that
person retains a constant configuration throughout er life? Could not
memory be augmented over time to allow the person to get older unboundedly?
Cheers
Saibal Mitra wrote:
>
> The total number of states a certain person can be in is bounded. One
might argue that according to quantum mechanics a certain person will always
find himself alive, but all that means is that that person will always find
himself in one out of a finite number of states. This implies that there can
be no continuous evolution such that the person becomes older and older ad
infinitum.
>
> Saibal
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Russell Standish Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone 9385 6967
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 Fax 9385 6965
Australia R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
Room 2075, Red Centre
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
Received on Fri Jun 08 2001 - 16:38:39 PDT